I remember reading Gabbard was going possibly vice prez choice with sanders. She has alot of good things going for her. But the democrates will never allow sanders to be the pick. And frankly she will get the cold shoulder for the DNC for not being on the Clinton team.

It depends how much you prioritize getting rid of Trump. If the nominee is Sanders, I predict he gets red-batied to death, and loses the election(forget about how many people on opinion polls say that they agree with his policies; voters are not neccessarily rational in that way).

But if the point is simply to make sure that the Democrats re-brand themselves as left-wing, regardless of the electoral outcome, then putting Sanders up would certainly do the trick.

It depends how much you prioritize getting rid of Trump. If the nominee is Sanders, I predict he gets red-batied to death, and loses the election(forget about how many people on opinion polls say that they agree with his policies; voters are not neccessarily rational in that way).

You don't think Obama and Clinton weren't red-baited to death even though they managed to get re-elected, and that Obama basically said, "this is what I believe, if they want to call me a socialist because of it I'll wear that label?"

This canard has been discredited over and over and over again. If you go to Vermont, some of Bernie's biggest fans are self-described gun-toting, traditional marriage loving, big government hating small-c conservatives. When you looked at head-to-head polling contests before the primaries, Sanders did well against every potential Republican opponent than Clinton did, and he still continues to poll well against Trump after the fact. Sanders also goes to town halls in these counties that went 70-80% for Trump, and they give Sanders a standing ovation. Sanders doesn't sound like a politician when he speaks, he sounds like one of us, and people resopnd well to that regardless of where they are on the political spectrum.

You don't think Obama and Clinton weren't red-baited to death even though they managed to get re-elected, and that Obama basically said, "this is what I believe, if they want to call me a socialist because of it I'll wear that label?"

Yes, but the point is, as you say, they managed to get re-elected. My paragraph was qualified with "It depends on how much you prioritize getting rid of Trump." If getting the Republicans out is the be all and end all at this point, then it doesn't really matter if any future Democrat is red-baited out of pursuing a leftward agenda. Democrats are basically in the position of Canadians(including a few non-Liberal babblers) who, during the last election, said "Look, I know Trudeau is a corporate hack imperialist, but things are so bad under Harper, the most important thing now is that we get rid of him."

As for Sanders having a big following among "gun-toting, traditional marriage loving, big government hating small-c conservatives", well, I've never been to Vermont, but I'm gonna guess that "gun-toting, traditional marriage loving, big government hating small-c conservative" might mean something a little different in Vermont than in, say, Alabama, or even some of the more right-leaning swing states.

And yes, Sanders may very well have topped the polls for a hypothetical race between him and the Republican nominee. But things might be a little different during an actual campaign, with the Republican attack machine in full swing.

Sanders against Trump in 2020. So Sanders would be 79 when elected and supposed to serve until 83. Trump would be 74 to 79. Clinton would be the spring chicken at 73. They are so old they hardly even make it into the baby boomer generation. We force our Supreme Court Judges and our Senators to retire at 75. Where are the US leaders in their 50's and 60's?

Is that country really so devoid of leadership that they have to elect people who are beyond the normal retirement date or is their system fundamentally broken and they have become a failed state incapable of producing elections that reflect the people.

Is that country really so devoid of leadership that they have to elect people who are beyond the normal retirement date

Choice 2:

Quote:

or is their system fundamentally broken and they have become a failed state incapable of producing elections that reflect the people.

The primary elections, however convoluted they might seem to us, give those people a chance to choose representatives that they support (or, perhaps, who "reflect" them).

So it's really not clear how or why the U.S. electorate must choose between someone older than they can support and someone who doesn't "reflect" them. If they'd wanted someone younger than Trump, there were others. If they'd wanted someone younger than Clinton or Sanders, there were others.

I campaigned for Bernie(gave the speech for him at the caucus in Juneau, Alaska(he took 82% in the state...100% in a couple of Bush, or rural Alaska caucus sites), but I doubt he would run again;

1) The age factor would hold him back;

2) The problems he had connecting with African-American and Latinx-American voters, as well as some female and LGBTQ voters, have not gone away;

3) He's one of the least ego-driven people in American politics. He ran because somebody had to run on the values of young progressive people and others whose political and economic values were defined by Occupy, not out of any actual deep-seated desire to hold power. In fact, I've sometimes thought that the way he conducted himself as a candidate was designed to make sure that he made a strong showing to further the issues he cared about but to make sure that he didn't actually win the Democratic nomination. I think he may have believed he could persuade Hillary's campaign and the party establishment to run the fall campaign as a kind of coalition and partnership with his movement-unfortunately, the Clinton-Kaine refused to do any such thing, and instead, seemed to base its general election strategy on two fatal delusions:

A) That the way to win was to focus on almost exclusively on attacking Trump on his personal scumbagitude, rather than on what Hillary would do if elected;

B) That the voters wanted the party to act as if Bernie's ideas had no support and that the Sanders campaign was either a total failure or simply never happened.

Sanders could also condone the candidacy of more than one person who runs in the presidential primaries in 2020 without backing a certain person in advance of the primaries. I think there are many qualified people who Sanders could condone of by 2020, so picking the two people who must be elected by the Democrats so far in advance of the primaries is both premature and immature. :) A lot can change in 2 years. A dark horse candidate could also appear that will surprise in the 2020 primaries.

I think this thread was created by someone who thinks they are one of the few here, or more likely, the only one here who has an adequate understanding of politics and that the rest of us here should wake up and heed his advice since he's the one who knows best. This thread title and its opening post are incredibly condescending.

If getting the Republicans out is the be all and end all at this point, then it doesn't really matter if any future Democrat is red-baited out of pursuing a leftward agenda. Democrats are basically in the position of Canadians(including a few non-Liberal babblers) who, during the last election, said "Look, I know Trudeau is a corporate hack imperialist, but things are so bad under Harper, the most important thing now is that we get rid of him."

The Democrats already tried this strategy in 2004 with Kerry and 2016 with Clinton and failed both times, and there is a sizeable contingent of voters who will insist on voting on principle no matter how bad the Republicans are. Whenever you tell people that a politician is bad, the reaction is "yeah, I know this politician is a reprehensible person who boils babies and eats them for breakfast, but that is true of politicians by definition, tell me something I don't know." You have to give people a reason to vote for something. If they're not inspired, then they will sit out of the process, and the Republicans will win by default.

voice of the damned wrote:

As for Sanders having a big following among "gun-toting, traditional marriage loving, big government hating small-c conservatives", well, I've never been to Vermont, but I'm gonna guess that "gun-toting, traditional marriage loving, big government hating small-c conservative" might mean something a little different in Vermont than in, say, Alabama, or even some of the more right-leaning swing states.

What do you guess this difference to be? Would that explain why Sanders was trounced in right-leaning states like West Virgina, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and Alaska?

voice of the damned wrote:

And yes, Sanders may very well have topped the polls for a hypothetical race between him and the Republican nominee. But things might be a little different during an actual campaign, with the Republican attack machine in full swing.

You didn't notice the Clinton attack machine in full swing against him in the Primaries and still in full swing against his supporters right now? You don't think that he faced a Republican attack machine in his home state? What actual dirt do the Republicans have on him that would stick during a general election?

Meanwhile leaving fantasyland, and living in the real world, nobody is going to unite the Democrats. Clinton and her supporters had their proverbial kick at the can, and now it's time for something very different. But the dumb Clintonites will never ever give up.

What's not to understand about that, eh!

Democrats are still at war with each other—but Kamala Harris could heal the rift

The right-wing of the Democrats, in total control of the Party, blew the 2016 election against a GOP buffoon candidate. Now it's now time for the right to get out of the way, and let a serious alternative to the Ryan/Trump duo, as opposed to a FAUX ALTERNATIVE, take on the GOP.

Is Bernie Sanders’ ‘Our Revolution’ Becoming the Tea Party of the Left?

And if Democrats in their stupidity take a pass on Sanders, he and Gabbard could do worse that join up with the DSA

At DSA’s Convention, Longtime Members Find Themselves in a Sea of Energetic New Faces

And they can’t believe how popular democratic socialism has become.

Williams, a retired professor of social work initially from Kentucky, joined DSA in 1992. For most of the following 25 years, however, his involvement has consisted chiefly of reading and trying to stay informed about what was going on in the organization. Retiring to Tacoma in 2010, he found that the local chapter had about 15 members—on paper. “All of us were white geezers, and we never really met or did anything,” he said. “Then Bernie came along, and whoosh!”

That is the sound of the membership of DSA exploding from roughly 6,000 to its current figure over 25,000. It now boasts that it is the largest socialist organization in the United States since World War II. With 697 delegates from 49 states, the 2017 convention is by considerable measure the organization’s largest ever. The great majority of the new members are Bernie Sanders’s most devout base of support: young people.

Vaughan Allen Goodwin. (Jesse Myerson)

Vaughan Allen Goodwin saw it coming. “I knew that at some point the frustrations of young people would cause them to want to go somewhere and to be in something,” says the 49-year-old Boston-based delegate. Goodwin, inspired by the late scholar Manning Marable to get involved with Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign, has been a DSA member ever since. This is his first national convention, though. “The emphasis was not on young people last time I was invited,” he explains. “Most successful movements start off and are led by young people.”

So evidently a fringe group of political supporters in another country managed to scrounge up 25k members, and the CBC is a right wing piece of shit because they didn't devote any time to this "story"?

"Gabbard and Lee appear to have succumbed to the pressure of the War Party. Now led by Democrats, the War Party must fulfill the wishes of its capitalist masters or die. It immediately saw the Trump administration as ideologically and politically unfit to contain the rising powers to the East..."

It began as an epithet hurled from centrist liberals. Now it’s backfiring.

Getty Images

But the people using it all had one thing in common: They were fervent supporters of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and they resented anyone on the left whose enthusiasm didn’t seem to match theirs.

After Clinton dragged the alt-right into the world’s headlines, use of “alt-left” exploded. Conservatives started using it too, as a reflexive insult lobbed at the Democrats in general, but for the most part it kept its original meaning. For the soon-to-be-doomed Clintonites, it was an incredibly useful term. If Clinton were simply to the right of Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump to the right of her, then her project could be seen by some on the left as one that meant drifting toward Trumpism, an unacceptable compromise with evil. The invention of the alt-left allowed centrist liberals to pretend that something entirely different was going on: They were sandwiched between two sets of frothing fanatics who secretly had a lot in common with each other. It established their particular brand of liberalism, possibly encompassing a few “moderate Republicans,” as the only reasonable ground, besieged by alts.

What was called the alt-left was simply the left (the socialist left, as opposed to liberalism), with its “alt” dangling as a meaningless appendage. But in the context of the alt-right, “alt” could be made to mean “unacceptable.” Calling their opponents to the left an alt-left implied, circuitously but unmistakably, that they too were racists and sexists, transphobes and anti-Semites, without ever requiring the courage to directly make the accusation. But what united the alt-right and the imputed alt-left most of all was their habit of being rude to liberals online. (Of course, liberals are also rude online—everyone is rude online—but that didn’t seem to factor into the calculations.) The alt-left primarily defined itself by a discursive tone: strident, snarky, unapologetic. This alone was often enough to put them in the company of Nazis—it’s as if the worst thing about the Nazis weren’t their genocidal beliefs, but the rude words with which they expressed them.

This red-baiting sense of the term “alt-left” continued to be used right up until the murders in Charlottesville. (This landmark Vanity Fair article on the subject, published in March this year, gives you a flavor of the general tone of the discussion; there have been endless similar essays, but really they’re all the same.) Even as the Nazis and the Klan assembled in Virginia, some liberals were continuing to insist that the murderous far-right and the socialist left were essentially the same, or at the very least balanced each other out. One Twitter user captioned a picture of torch-wielding fascists with the words “when you critique Bernie Sanders.” Clinton insider Neera Tanden used the march as an opportunity to once again conjure up the fantasy that there are some on “the alt left who want to join with the fascists.” Mieke Eoyang, a director at the centrist Third Way think tank, mockingly proclaimed, “if the Bernie Bros wanted to make a show of force on behalf of progressive values, Saturday in Charlottesville would be a good time.” But as it happens, the people out in force in Virginia to oppose the far-right were not, for the most part, Clinton Democrats. They were socialists and communists: the Democratic Socialists on America, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Workers World Party and Black Lives Matter, among others. They were the alt-left.

Now that Trump has added “alt-left” to his armory of insults, many of these same centrist constituencies are appalled that anyone could ever draw a moral equivalence between fascists and those opposing them. But this is exactly what they did, and what they’ve been doing for over a year. There’s a pattern here. Immediately after the 2016 election, liberals pioneered the notion of “fake news”—made up or poorly sourced, inaccurate and hyperpartisan media, generated for furious clicks, misleading wide sectors of the population. It didn’t take long for the right to reclaim the term, hurling it back at the mainstream press. (After all, weren’t their breathless warnings over WMD as fake as anything the right-wing internet has to offer?) Now, “fake news” is firmly established in the reactionary lexicon, and liberals are horrified by it. They should be; it’s a brutish, philistine epithet, and never more so than when it’s coughed up from the throat of Donald Trump—but it’s their monster. They forgot that the criticisms they make of their enemies can also apply to themselves, and that, as long as that’s true, their clever production of phrases will always be immediately appropriated by the right. “Alt-left” has followed exactly the same course. The term was meant to imply that the socialist left and the most despicable creatures of the right are on the same moral plane. But it’s possible to make any number of connections: If liberals and fascists are both terrified by the notion of an active, unashamed leftist movement, and if they express that terror with the same nonsense phrase, what else might they have in common?

It could mean extreme anti-establishment to some; it could mean violent anti-establishment. It might mean nihilist. It could mean the left that are divided from the other left (whatever that means).

The point is that it does not matter and it does not actually mean anything at all or it means anything you want it to mean. The alt right are people who call themselves that. We define them further but they are collectively something by their association that we seek to define and explain.

The alt left is a word but there is no group of people who associate with that word and therefore there is no possible definition nor a limit to any definition -- it is whatever the users of the word want it to be and can be applied to whomever they feel like. The word alt left is a right-wing word that we do not need and so the difficulty of defining it is not ours. when it is used in a serious context, it is only possible to say that there is no such movement, identity, or group but that it is an epithet to create a foil for the alt right, a collective word for left groups the right does not seek to understand or define, or a fantasy used to create an equivalency.